Composites: a new possibility for the shear strengthening of concrete, masonry and wood

The paper presents a compilation of some of the author's research results related to the use of composites as shear strengthening materials for concrete, masonry and wood members. The main emphasis is on the presentation of analytical models for the contribution of composites to the shear capacity of strengthened elements, within the framework of ultimate limit states. It is demonstrated that in the case of concrete and masonry, the design of FRP-strengthened members can be treated on the basis of the classical truss analogy and by accounting for an effective FRP strain, which depends on the product of the FRP elastic modulus and the area fraction, while the analysis of shear strength in the case of wood members is quite straightforward, following basic principles of mechanics.